S3 Graphics Preps New Breed of Graphics Chips – Web-Site.

S3 Graphics reportedly plans to commercially launch its new family of visual processing units in a couple of month time. The new lineup of the company’s chips will be branded Chrome S20, will support multi-GPU configurations, will be made using 90nm process technology, which is expected to allow the chips to run at relatively high clock-speeds.

S3 Graphics’ Chrome S20 graphics processors will be designed for PCI Express bus and will sport revamped architecture compared to the GammaChrome family unveiled earlier this year. In particular, the new Chrome S20-series will sport a new video engine – Chromotion 3.0 – as well as multi-GPU technology called Multi-G, according to Chrome-Center web-site. The Chrome S20 family of chips is unlikely to contain any feature-set improvements compared to predecessors and will sport a set of DirectX 9.0 capabilities found in GammaChrome and DeltaChrome.

According to a roadmap posted over the Chrome-Center web-site, the Chrome S20 will consist of 3 visual processing units (VPUs): S23, S25 and S27 designed for entry-level, mainstream and performance-mainstream markets respectively. While the roadmap does not touch specifications upon, it is reported that S27 features 8 pixel pipelines, supports Multi-G technology and operates at 700MHz or higher. It is projected that the chips will sport 128-bit memory interface and will be able to operate with DDR, GDDR2 and GDDR3 memory.

GammaChrome product series has been dropped in favour of supposedly more powerful Chrome S20-series that are made using 90nm process technology, the web-site claims. Availability of the new products from S3 is targeted towards November, according to the information posted.

Separate flavours of Chrome 20-series for mobile computers – models XM23, XM25 and XM27 are planned to be launched late this year and early next year.